The Eye Test: Bruin Win Never in Doubt in the Desert

Arizona State gave UCLA a small scare, but emphasis on small.

Kazmeir Allen had himself a day against the Sun Devils. (Photo credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports via uclabruins.com)

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Much like with last week, I don’t know how much I will have to say during the Eye Test. Part of that has to do with basketball being back, but the bigger reason is maybe the most important takeaway you could have from this game.

A UCLA team riding an excellent season walked into the Arizona desert in November and came out of it with a commanding victory. This is not 2005, when UCLA rode an 8-0 record into Tuscon and came away with an embarrassing 52-14 loss. More and more, you get the sense that this UCLA team is very similar to the 1998 squad that married an elite offense with a poor defense all the way to the Rose Bowl. If a team can play offense near UCLA’s level, then the game is going to be close; if they can’t keep up, then UCLA is likely to turn it into a laugher before losing interest in the second half.

And let’s throw one more reason why I don’t have much to say here: Arizona State is not very good. They’ve already fired Herm Edwards, they’re on their second quarterback of the year, and I’m suddenly very doubtful that they get a fourth win this season. Even considering the road aspect, this was a game UCLA should have won handily, and they did. There’s really no deeper analysis that should be made beyond that.

But we’ll go ahead and do some deep analysis anyway.

Offense

Quarterback: B+

Receivers: B+

You get the sense that UCLA really only threw the ball out of some obligation to give Dorian Thompson-Robinson some reps. He only threw 20 times on the day, completing 13 of them for 196 yards and two touchdowns, but he did not really throw the ball down the field. Part of that had to do with Arizona State’s defensive alignment, which kept the two safeties up high to prevent getting beat over the top most of the game, but when your rushing attack was as effective as UCLA’s was in this game, I wouldn’t pass much too. Receivers didn’t have much to do today, and there were a couple drops, but they were mostly fine. I’d expect them to see more this coming week in preparation for Southern Cal.

Where Thompson-Robinson made his money today was in the ground game. DTR ran the ball 10 times for 120 yards and two touchdowns, with the highlight of course being the latest successful hurdle of the season. I had a talk with Brian Pedersen of AZ Desert Swarm in advance of the game this week where we talked about Thompson-Robinson’s improvement, and I wrote the following:

Nothing highlights that more than his hurdle attempts; early in his career, he would attempt a hurdle and it would go poorly, but he's nailed every single attempt this year because he's much better about picking his spots.

That’s Dorian Thompson-Robinson in 2022; he’s nailing all of the highlight stuff he attempted and failed in years past, in the ultimate glow-up.

Running Back: A

Offensive Line: A-

Real quick on the offensive line: their grade is dinged just due to some problems in pass protection, which we’re monitoring as the season gets down to the wire. Otherwise excellent job by that unit.

UCLA ran for 402 yards in the game. Take away Dorian Thompson-Robinson, and the UCLA running backs still ran for 282 yards on 32 carries for an average of 8.8 YPC. That they did all of that despite star running back Zach Charbonnet not playing a single down due to a theoretical injury is even more impressive. Kazmeir Allen was able to show off his track speed with a 75 yard touchdown run en route to 223 all-purpose yards on the day. Keegan Jones had perhaps his best day as a runner, doing a good job of finding the holes repeatedly and churning his feet. And then when Jones and Allen got banged up, Colson Yankoff came in and just punished Arizona State repeatedly, getting the capping touchdown to seal the game. Just an excellent job from this group (I’m still not super confident in the #2 running back spot, but this was at least a huge step in the right direction).

Overall: A

Look, at the end of the day, UCLA was without one of their biggest offensive weapons and still put up 50 points and 571 yards, including the biggest rushing total of the Chip Kelly era. Even with us grading on a curve because Arizona State is bad, this was impressive.

Defense

Overall: B- (for the part of the game that was competitive)

The garbage-time comeback defense: F

Not much to really breakdown from a run vs pass standpoint, if I’m being honest. Despite the general bad nature of Arizona State, they do still possess some talent at the skill positions. Xazavian Valladay is one of the better running backs in the conference, while it looks like they finally have something interesting at quarterback in Trenton Bourguet. Bourguet was forced to throw 49 times in this game due to UCLA’s offense putting the Sun Devil defense into a blender, but he acquitted himself well.

The grade for the defense is instead getting broken down into two parts. For the parts of the game that were competitive, UCLA played fairly well. The Bruins held Arizona State to 168 yards and 10 points in the first half, then forced a three-and-out to start the second. UCLA would score fairly quickly, make it 35-10, and essentially end the game. There are some nitpicks here and there, such as the poor play of Azizi Hearn and some generally bad tackling letting ASU extend a few drives, but it was a perfectly acceptable performance.

Then UCLA put in the subs and it all went bad.

The Bruins put the second string in after going up 25 and Arizona State was able to string together a solid touchdown drive. That gave them momentum and confidence, and even when the starters came back in on the next series, it became almost impossible for UCLA to stop ASU from scoring. The Sun Devils scored on four straight drives in the second half before a Jaylin Davies interception mercifully ended the game, and the drives were characterized by methodical yardage gains (four of the last five ASU drives gained at least 68 yards and each took at least seven plays).

I’m still not sure what to make of this overall. Like I said, when the game was actually close, the defense played well, and then when things got out of hand, Arizona State was finally able to figure things out. I’ve been on the record as stating that the defense isn’t very good, but if it can do more things like it did in the first half and less of what happened in the second half, that would certainly help!

Special Teams

Overall: B+

I mean, they really did not have much to do here. Nicholas Barr-Mira did not have a field goal attempt, so good job to him on making all six of his PAT attempts. He did have to punt twice, and they weren’t great, but at this point I’m resigned to average punting with Barr-Mira having to pull double-duty. They also did not return a single kick.

All that said, after the last few weeks of special teams adventures, I am more than willing to take this.

Coaching

Offensive Gameplan: A

You could realistically just copy and paste what I said at the end of the offense section right here and it would still apply. UCLA was really able to do whatever they wanted in this game (even if all they wanted to do was run) and any success Arizona State found defensively has more to do with UCLA disinterest than anything truly good that the Sun Devils did. Moving on.

Defensive Gameplan: C

A lot of this grade comes down to that decision to bring in the subs early. UCLA was playing well up to that point, but it allowed Arizona State to grab momentum and make the game much closer than it needed to be. UCLA plays a very bend-don’t-break style, which is fine when you’re playing lesser offenses because they’ll eventually make mistakes, but if you let a team get some confidence, you’re gonna have a hard time stopping them.

Overall: B

I don’t think UCLA really had to struggle in this game from a scheme standpoint, so a lot of this grade comes down to feel. I feel the offense did perfectly fine, especially given the fact that one of their main toys were unavailable. On the flip side, I feel the defense did ok until they very much did not. We’re splitting the difference here.

That said, I do want to give some credit to the coaching staff for not letting this team fall into a slump. This was a game that a lot of people circled as a potential trap game, not because Arizona State is sneaky good or anything, but more because UCLA hasn’t played many road games this year and they could be caught looking ahead to the one difficult game they have left. That didn’t happen, so good job.

Vibes

Vibe check: Chillin in the desert

I think I said the words “This game is over” about three different times during this game, which speaks to how in-control UCLA was for most of it, but also to how confident I am in this team’s ability to put away lesser opponents. UCLA teams of the past would have me clenching the entire time, but this team repeatedly finds a way to get things done, which has done a wonder for my blood pressure.

Final Composite

Offense grade: A (4.0)

Defense grade: B- (2.7)

Special Teams grade: B+ (3.3)

Coaching grade: B (3.0)

Vibe check: Chillin in the desert

Final grade for Arizona State Sun Devils: B+ (3.24)

A reminder of the previous grades:

Bowling Green Falcons: B- (2.76)

Alabama State Hornets: B+ (3.47)

South Alabama Jaguars: C (1.91)

Colorado Buffaloes: B+ (3.38)

Washington Huskies: A- (3.71)

Utah Utes: A- (3.70)

Oregon Ducks: C- (1.67)

Stanford Cardinal: B+ (3.20)

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One more tune-up game this weekend before the big showdown with Southern Cal. Arizona should provide a different kind of test for UCLA, with an excellent set of receivers that can mimic the talent level that the Trojans possess. That said, they also have perhaps the worst defense in the conference, so this should not be especially close.

Go Bruins!

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